20 April 2013 4:58 PM

Mr Andrew Platt posted as follows on the previous thread. For the enjoyment and edification of readers, and perhaps of Mr Platt as well, I thought I would reply in detail. I have interleaved my replies with his contribution, my words being in bold type.

Mr Platt begins : Mr. Hitchens is always ready to accuse his critics of bad behaviour yet is just as guilty himself of the very same things. It is pure comedy for him to be pointing out contributors with a “high-handed, self-righteous and overbearing tone”. It is like Dean Martin accusing someone of being drunk! Anyone using such a tone here presumably learned it from the master.

**PH responds : Actually, most of the aggressive attacks come from people who are unfamiliar with this site, or who only care (or post) about one subject. I think of Mr Jacubs, who accompanied his criticisms of my view of the Bomber offensive with repeated and aggressive assaults on my patriotism, etc, which he certainly had not learned from me and to which I did not respond in kind. Mr Ward, Professor Coyne, various Darwinist fanatics, a fellow who runs a site devoted to criticising popular conservative newspapers, also spring to mind. These people despise me and make no secret of it. But Mr Platt must not mistake robust defence of a position for personal abuse. I’d be interested if he could provide examples of the wicked things he says I have done.

I confess freely to dealing harshly with one or two regular contributors, but only after I had tried and failed to engage with them reasonably. In both cases I have made it pretty plain that I would be happy if they would go away. Both almost certainly won’t because other contributors here insist on encouraging them by replying to his posts. Perhaps this is kind of them, but for myself I see no need to be kind to one of them - a person who thinks the National Socialist massacre of European Jews has been exaggerated, and who robustly defends the BNP. There are other communities in which he could find care. He begged to be allowed to resume commenting here after he had been quite properly expelled, aftr a breach of the known rules which he was warned against. I agreed to let him return because he apologised for his original fault and it was only just to do so. But he should feel free to vanish voluntarily at any time, if he doesn’t like what I say about him and Italian pasta dishes.

Another long ago wrote himself out of serious discussion by claiming that he wasn’t in control of his own logical process, but was prevented from considering various propositions by a mysterious unnamed force (perhaps it was Santa Claus, or a goblin, or a levitating teapot). This contributor simultaneously claimed to be entirely free of any belief in the supernatural. But he keeps on coming back, often with smirking little jibes at religious belief which he really has no business to make, under the circumstances.

There is a one very common problem among my critics, which is unresponsiveness. If I take the trouble to argue with someone, I expect the same in return, and the repeated avoidance of important points, as if I had never made them, by someone who has anxiously sought debate, always strikes me as disappointing and frustrating. I believe that, when I challenge contributors here, I do attempt to deal directly with what they say, in some detail. This leads to criticisms (of a kind which I shall probably receive now, for this) that I am wasting my time, or going on too long. But this blog is not like any other, and this is one of its features.

Mr Platt continues : What is not comical is the way he hounds critics to reply to his points – often to an extraordinary degree – while at the same time failing to respond to awkward points his critics raise.

PH responds. I should be grateful for examples of this alleged hounding. I keep no hounds, and can only mock those who disappear in mid-battle, as a distinguished former civil servant did after being given the hospitality of this site to state his views. This doesn’t seem to me to be a very fearsome sanction.

Mr Platt resumes : I am not referring to some of the semi-literate ramblings found here, which anyone with sense would ignore, but valid points of fact or logic that would demand an answer in any balanced debate.

PH replies. Again, I should like examples. I won’t discuss theology because I know nothing about it, don’t pretend to know anything about it and am bored to distraction by it. I never try to persuade anyone to become a religious believer, merely to point out that he or she has the choice of believing or not (even this statement of the obvious is met with puzzled rage in some quarters, but how one argues about that I have never been able to fathom) . I also *defend* the freedom of the intelligent person to be a religious believer, against the increasingly abusive intolerance of the new type of atheist. But my position is purely defensive. I do not say that atheism is an absurd belief, or an impossible belief, or a contemptible belief (though I do suggest that it has consequences, and that it seems likely to me that many of its adherents know this and choose it for that reason. This statement of the blindingly obvious also leads to angry attacks upon me, against which I sometimes defend myself).

I confess that I long ago declared that I would not enter into any more discussions of evolution by natural selection (sometimes I will make tangential references to it where absolutely necessary, but the main stem of the subject is one I will not again discuss here). This is because I concluded that most supporters of the theory are cultist believers in the grip of a powerful faith, and are moved to something close to rage by the mildest expression of doubt, which is all I ever do express. Only total acquiescence will do, and then some. There is, simply, no point in debating with such people and I have given up. Otherwise, I can’t recall having done what Mr Platt alleges.

Mr Platt says :’Of course, as blog owner Mr. Hitchens quite rightly has the Dimbleby role, a parallel I draw deliberately since he has in the past felt compelled to complain about the treatment he receives on QT.’

PH says . I’m not sure I’d call it a complaint, exactly, just a description of the conditions under which I know I shall have to operate if I go on such programmes, which are demonstrably so , and which I accept as the necessary condition for appearing. I tend to find that my supporters and sympathisers are often much more worried by these conditions than I am. My consistent complaint against the BBC (invariably misrepresented by my opponents as personal whingeing) is of an institutional bias which it refuses to recognise. Obviously, it cannot be expected to correct this, any more than a person who can’t be persuaded he is short-sighted can be persuaded to go to the optician. He will continue to believe that he bumps into all those objects because they are not looking where they are going.

Mr Platt first quotes me “A certain willingness to believe it possible that you may be mistaken, a willingness to learn from an opponent, and a generosity of spirit towards that opponent, are essential for any serious debate.”

And then asks ‘Can he point to a time when he may have been mistaken over any significant point, or better still a time when he changed his mind as a result of something posted here? Has he demonstrated a willingness to learn from an opponent?

PH replies , there are three questions here, perhaps four. I am sure I have acknowledged one or two factual mistakes where pointed out, but can’t instantly recall. Everyone makes factual errors from time to time. I am at the moment trying , through the Nottingham City Library, to get the details of the closures of the Nottinghamshire and Derby coal mines, because a contributor has said that I have wrongly attributed these to Lady Thatcher, who, he believes, was not in office at the time. If I find I was wrong, I will say so. As for changing my mind, not so far. But who knows the future?

I can demonstrate a capacity for changing my mind, but not necessarily here. If I have done it before I can do it again, it is not like the long jump, where your powers fail as the years drag by.

But is it my fault if nobody has turned up here with any arguments or facts that have done so? I have to say that a 36-year (and continuing) remedial course at the University of Fleet Street, including specialist jobs in several important areas, a lot of foreign travel and two periods of residence abroad, is a pretty good education in what’s what and what’s not. And past membership of a Marxist-Leninist organisation also gives me insights that few have had. But I don’t rule it out. I approach every serious opponent by examining and replying to his facts and his logic. I learn a lot from good opponents, and after such an encounter, am usually better at arguing my position than I was before. You can learn from an opponent without going over to his side.

There are, however, a number of subjects where the question is not one of rightness or wrongness but of principle or of faith. One simply disagrees about what is the better course to take, on the basis of moral precepts which are a matter of choice. This is so with the religious argument , the drug argument and the topic of sexual morality. To some extent it also affects debates on crime and punishment, on foreign intervention or immigration. All that debate can achieve is a clearer idea of what divides me from my opponents.

Mr Platt says : He (that’s me) has had exchanges with some highly educated people recently, including two professors, but I have not seen any evidence he has learned anything from them at all. Neither did I detect any generosity of spirit towards Professor Millican, though perhaps I was just not looking hard enough.

PH responds : I reject this. I’m not sure who the other Professor is. If Professor Coyne is meant, he tends to use long-distance weapons, and I have explained why (having tried in the past and been met with teenage spite and discourtesy at his site) I won’t engage with him or his circus. As for Professor Millican, I think he was treated courteously and generously, given as much space as he desired, to say what he liked. I happen to think that he got into a mess with probability (unwilling to concede that his idea of what was probable might be influenced by his desires, and unwilling to accept that probability cannot be extended into certainty, by its nature); and indeed with the universal religious problem, that he believes what he wishes to believe about God (as do I). If one party to the argument admits this, and the other doesn’t, things will be uneven. I didn’t particularly seek an argument with him, because I foresaw this precise problem, but I answered him promptly and politely for as long as he remained here.

Mr Platt says “Those afflicted often show this by acting and writing as if their opinions are facts.”

If a phenomenon supported by a huge weight of independently established evidence gathered over tens of decades, and which no observation has ever called into question, cannot be acknowledged as a fact then we might well ask in this context whether the word fact has any meaning.’

PH replies. Well, if no observation has ever established it, then the fact that no observation has ever called it into question doesn’t really make much difference. I think I know what he is driving at here, and if so, I think he has a bit of a cheek referring to ‘independently established evidence’ . Independently of what or whom? As for ‘huge weight’, it is not a scientific measure. There was a huge weight of evidence for the Ptolemaic geocentric theory of the universe, gathered over many centuries, because so many people wanted to believe it . It happened to be wrong. So I think we can still just about cling to the word ‘fact’ in the stormy seas of uncertainty in which we are tossed about.

I know. See above. It becomes comical again when one considers that the same person claiming to respect facts and logic is someone who has openly admitted that there are certain things he would continue to believe no matter how hypothetically flimsy the evidence for them became.

Facts and logic indeed!

PH asks: I am glad he is finding comedy in our encounters. I am as well. Have I said or ’admitted’ ( lovely neutral word, that) ‘that there are certain things he (me) would continue to believe no matter how hypothetically flimsy the evidence for them became.’?

Or have I said something rather different, which Mr Platt has reconstructed and moulded into this shape, so as to suit himself? And what would Mr Platt call that, were it done to him?